A database of approximately 593,000 Alaska voter records has been exposed online.
TargetSmart, the company that owns the data, claims that it was not accessed by anyone other than the security researchers on their team and the team that identified the exposure.
Tom Bonier, the Chief Executive Officer of TargetSmart, confirmed the breach and said in a statement that Equals3, a software company based in Minnesota, “Appears to have failed to secure some of their data and some data they license...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Xaxis, the world’s largest programmatic media and technology platform, announced today the launch of Xaxis Politics, the industry’s first targeted political advertising solution for reaching U.S. voters across all digital channels without utilizing personally identifiable information. Developed with Haystaq DNA, Xaxis Politics is the first programmatic product that enables advertisers to leverage offline voter data to inform their digital campaigns. This means that ...

PHILIPPINES, 16 February 2016 - Xaxis, the world’s largest programmatic media and technology platform, announced today the launch of Xaxis Politics to coincide with the Philippines Presidential Elections due to take place in May 2016.
Xaxis Politics will be the first programmatic product in APAC that enables political advertisers to leverage on real time anonymous voter data to inform their digital campaigns in real time. This means that political candidates can reach their most relevant vot...

A Cambridge University psychology professor harvested personal data from millions of Facebook users and then passed on that information, much of which was obtained without the users consent, to a political strategy company with links to President Donald Trump’s campaign, Steve Bannon and the billionaire conservative campaign donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, according to reports from The Guardian and The New York Times.
Aleksandr Kogan, 32, worked with Cambridge Analytica, a Mercer-backed fi...

The company at the heart of Facebook’s data harvesting scandal has filed for bankruptcy. But that doesn’t mean the UK firm’s executives and moneymen are simply riding off into the sunset.
When news broke that Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL Group, were to shut their doors and file for bankruptcy, little sympathy was found for the firms on social media.
A company statement cited the “the siege of media coverage” in the wake of the scandal, which saw 87 million Facebook users ...

Alexander Nix, the ousted CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct data firm that worked on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential run, made his long-awaited return to Parliament on Wednesday. It was Nix's first appearance in front of U.K. lawmakers since Cambridge Analytica's allegedly illegal data practices were revealed to the world, sparking a global reckoning over how tech companies like Google and Facebook harvest, share and monetize the personal data of the billions of people who use thei...

Cambridge Analytica, the controversial firm that helped Donald Trump become the President of the United States, has also done work in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and is in the process of "moving into Brazil" reports from British broadcaster Channel 4 and Bloomberg have revealed. The Political consultancy has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after Facebook suspended it for violating Facebook's privacy policies.
In a secretly recorded meeting with a journalist posing as a potentia...

The abuse of Facebook’s platform for political purposes is a problem that doesn’t stop at the U.S border. Governments around the world are continuing to wrestle with the implications of Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of Facebook user data from the heart of Europe to the capitals of Latin America’s most populous nations.
In South America, several chapters are still being written into the public record of Facebook’s privacy privations. Some Latin American democracies are also beginning to i...

LONDON -- The former head of Cambridge Analytica said Wednesday that his political consulting firm got "an incredibly huge target" on its back because of its involvement in President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Alexander Nix said his now-defunct firm had become the subject of global derision and was unfairly blamed for putting Mr. Trump in office.
The remarks came as an unrepentant Nix clashed with British lawmakers investigating the use of Facebook data in election campaigns. The Pa...

The former boss of Cambridge Analytica has claimed his company has been “victimised” by a liberal backlash against Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.
Alexander Nix was suspended as the data analysis firm’s chief executive after being filmed discussing the use of prostitutes and bribes in honey-traps to discredit politicians, and later resigned amid claims of the misuse of Facebook users’ personal information in the Trump campaign.
Giving evidence to a British parliamentary committee, ...

The Papua New Guinea government is planning to shut down Facebook for a month to understand users' behaviour and safeguard them from fake news.
According to a report in The Post Courier on 28 May, communication minister Sam Basil said the shutdown would enable the department and Papua New Guinea National Research Institute conduct research on how the social networking site is being used by users.
"The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accoun...

The personal information of more than 200,000 Delawareans was compromised in the recently disclosed Facebook data breach, according to the state Department of Justice.
Attorney General Matt Denn said 902 Facebook users in Delaware installed an app that allowed Global Science Research to access personal information of those users and their friends without their knowledge or permission. Facebook estimated that nearly 201,000 people in Delaware were friends with those on the social media site w...

Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic whose app has set off the firestorm about online user data, says he’s considering suing Facebook.
LONDON — Aleksandr Kogan wants to set the record straight. “I am not a Russian spy,” he tells BuzzFeed News aboard a Saturday evening flight to the British capital. On Tuesday, the Cambridge University researcher is set to testify here in front of a parliamentary committee that is looking to determine whether the political consulting firm Cambri...

French Presidential Candidate Running Data-Based Campaign
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Independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron hires firm to help with campaign
France by ericniequist
The role of data and analytics in identifying and engaging relevant audiences is as important to politics as it is to marketing. And not just in the United States.
In the run-up to this year's French Presidential election — the first round of voting takes place in April — th...

While France bars contributions from businesses, loans are allowed. A Russian bank made headlines in recent years after lending millions of euros to the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen. After that bank failed last year, the party complained that it had been shunned by French banks and declared itself in the market for a new lender.
If nothing else, European far-right parties are gaining newly emboldened allies.
“I expect the Trump administration to be more open to these part...

Facebook told CNN it is looking into ties between one of its current employees and Cambridge Analytica, the controversial data firm that worked for Donald Trump's presidential campaign and was suspended by Facebook on Friday.
Joseph Chancellor, now a researcher at Facebook (FB), was a director of Global Science Research, a company that provided data to Cambridge Analytica. The New York Times and The Observer newspaper in London reported Saturday that Cambridge Analytica harvested information...

Siglo announced this week the launch of a new protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain that facilitates free access to mobile connectivity for prepaid subscribers in emerging markets. The blockchain-based platform connects airtime sponsors with smartphone subscribers, creating a decentralized mobile network powered by the value-transfer between users, providers, and brands.
“In emerging markets, increased access to mobile connectivity creates new economic opportunities,” said Joel Phillips,...

Boasting many of the same principals as Cambridge Analytica, that company's announced "shutdown" looks a lot like a renaming. And the timing is suspicious.
Yesterday, it was reported that Cambridge Analytica, the Trump-connected data-mining firm that improperly accessed Facebook data of 87 million people, was shutting down. But "shutting down" may not mean much — many of that company's principal players are associated with a new data company called Emerdata.
What is Emerdata?
Emerdata was ...

State Attorney General Matt Denn — one of 41 attorneys general who signed a March letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that they will investigate whether the site’s data breach violated state laws — found that more than 200,000 people in Delaware alone may have had their personal data exposed to Cambridge Analytica and other third parties.
In a state with only 960,000 people, that’s no small number. Assuming every Delawarean had Facebook (and that’s not the case), there’d be a roug...

During his appearance before the United States Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did quite the job tiptoeing through a minefield of potentially threatening inquiries. Based on his answers, he either has no idea how the platform – which was founded controversially – works, or he blatantly lied to protect his interests in the firm.
Despite the obviously high-tech nature of Facebook, no experts were present to evaluate the claims of the technology mogul. W...

" " Facebook users expressed outrage when learning their private data was used by Cambridge Analytica, the recently defunct British firm at the center of a major scandal involving the 2016 election, Donald Trump and private data. DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images
When news broke in early March 2018 that Cambridge Analytica, a data mining firm, accessed private information of more than 87 million Facebook users without their permission, people were outraged. But as the story grew, it became...

I'm going to assume that you weren't living in an internet-proof cave this weekend, and caught at least some of the stories about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. The news first kicked off with the announcement of a data protection lawsuit filed against Cambridge Analytica in the UK on Friday evening (we'll likely have more on that lawsuit soon), followed quickly by an attempt by Facebook to get out ahead of the coming tidal wave by announcing that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and s...

BEN NORTON: It’s The Real News. I’m Ben Norton.
An explosive new investigative report by the journalist Max Blumenthal exposes how Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Group ran a counterinsurgency program in Yemen on behalf of a U.S.-based military contractor. Cambridge Analytica was a political data company that dissolved this year after it was exposed that the firm had been hired by the Donald Trump campaign to manipulate the 2016 presidential election. Blumenthal obtained exclusive d...